A Reflection of a Boarding School Graduate

Like any and all group projects ours definitely came with its challenges and successes. As a group we chose to turn Piper’s auto ethnography into a video because we believed her experience was both unique and interesting. Using our time wisely, we believe that we turned her essay into a captivating digital piece showing the effects that boarding school has on relationships with teachers, parents, the effect that it has on independence and attitudes on social class.We also believe our video adequately depicts the negative and positive effects of boarding school on adolescents today, such as the effect of being closer with one’s teachers and peers than one’s parents.

When we first chose Piper’s auto ethnography we mapped out a brief outline for a script. After that, we began to brainstorm different ways we could use images and videos to add a visual aspect to her writing. Because we obviously couldn’t go film at Lawrenceville we had to make certain rhetorical choices that made sense in this context. We started by looking through her photos from her time at boarding school. We put 150 photos into a folder and from there we started to narrow them down, figuring out which photos seemed the most relevant. In high school Piper did a project using Final Cut Pro where she had to film the hockey team and some shots of Lawrenceville. We chose to use some of that video footage along with short clips of video from the Lawrenceville Youtube Channel. We also found photos of the school and photos of certain classrooms from the Lawrenceville website. Once we had enough footage and still images we began to record the voiceovers. We took parts of her essay and changed them slightly and then Piper read them aloud. We also picked a clip out a train window for the beginning as a rhetorical choice to depict leaving for school. Here we added part of the song “Rivers and Roads” because the song distinctly says “A year from now we’ll all be gone/ All our friends will move away/ And they’re going to better places/ But our friends will be gone away” (The Head and the Heart). This song seemed to appeal to pathos, we attempted to invoke the emotion that comes with moving away from your close friends. Later on we use another short clip of the song right after talking about how close you get with your teachers. The song says “And my family lives in a different state” (The Head and the Heart). This is also an appeal to pathos. We tried to invoke the emotion that comes with being away from your family because shortly after that we go on to discuss the problems one can face growing up away from one’s parents in such a pivotal time in one’s development. Lastly, for the credits we used a clip from the song “Home” by Phillip Phillips. After talking about how Piper made boarding school her home and grew comfortable there, we go on to discuss how Wake Forest will begin to feel comfortable with time. At that point the video ends, the credits come on, and then Phillip Phillip’s song comes on saying “‘Cause I’m going to make this place your home/ Settle down, it’ll all be clear” (Phillip Phillips). We used this part of this song as an appeal to pathos as well. By using these short bits and pieces of these songs they fit their rhetorical situation best, if we had used longer clips their meaning might have gotten lost and one may focus less on the specific lyrics.

In terms of the writing aspect of this video, we stuck pretty closely to the same structure Piper used for her essay. We altered her thesis slightly and added more about social class and socioeconomic status than she originally had in her paper in accordance with Professor Giovanelli’s suggestions. We also added a short quote from Christine Walley’s book “Exit Zero” in order to appeal to ethos. By using a quote from Walley we demonstrated how some could view boarding school as “elitist” or “exclusive”, however then we projected the current Lawrenceville statistics/demographics in order to show how boarding school is moving away from this mentality and at Lawrenceville there is more diversity than ever in another attempt to appeal to ethos. If we had both more time and could make a longer video we could have added even more about class and maybe this would have helped our group get even more at the so what? or the who cares?

In terms of overall challenges that we faced, we worked around them to the best of our ability. We probably could have made better use of captions instead of it being a voice over the entire time. The only problem about captions was that they were tough to put over the photos sometimes because a lot of the time the text wouldn’t show up. We could’ve taken out some of the photos and added a blank screen with text, however we did not think this would be as interesting. If we had more time and an endless budget we could have gone to Lawrenceville to record more of our own video footage, however this was an obvious constraint. We filmed an interview between Piper and Chloe Sweet, a fellow boarding school graduate, however it was not as strong as we had hoped so we decided to leave it out.

This project was extremely different than anything we had previously done this year and was a pleasant surprise. When thinking about the overall focus of this class, we have not only come to understand it as becoming a better writer, but as a better communicator as well. This project showed us that messages sometimes have to be altered depending on the platform they’re shared on and to what audience they’re shared with. This project did a great job at highlighting this concept as we were forced to shift the style of the paper to a more informal and popular feel for the video. In the end we believe we were successful in communicating everything presented in Piper’s autoethnography in our video. It was a very interesting change of pace and a great way end the semester.

Piper Habib and Matty Glynn